On the Waterfront (1954) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error An ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses. Director: Budd Schulberg (screenplay), Budd Schulberg (based upon an original story by) | 1 more credit » Stars: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 25 titles created 03 Apr 2011 a list of 47 titles created 29 Nov 2011 a list of 47 titles created 18 Nov 2014 a list of 34 titles created 08 Dec 2014 a list of 49 titles created 30 Aug 2015 Title: On the Waterfront (1954) 8.2/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin.

Won 8 Oscars. Another 21 wins & 9 nominations. See more awards » Videos Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her. Director: Elia Kazan Fred Dobbs and Bob Curtin, two Americans searching for work in Mexico, convince an old prospector to help them mine for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains. Director: John Huston A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue. Director: Billy Wilder A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity. Director: Billy Wilder After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the Allies to destroy it. Director: David Lean A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette.

Director: John Huston A hapless New York advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive. Director: Alfred Hitchcock When two male musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all-female band disguised as women, but further complications set in. Director: Billy Wilder An insurance representative lets himself be talked into a murder/insurance fraud scheme that arouses an insurance investigator's suspicions. Director: Billy Wilder An ingenue insinuates herself into the company of an established but aging stage actress and her circle of theater friends. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz A poor Midwest family is forced off of their land. They travel to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression. Director: John Ford A spoiled heiress running away from her family is helped by a man who is actually a reporter in need of a story. Director: Frank Capra Edit Storyline Terry Malloy dreams about being a prize fighter, while tending his pigeons and running errands at the docks for Johnny Friendly, the corrupt boss of the dockers union.

Terry witnesses a murder by two of Johnny's thugs, and later meets the dead man's sister and feels responsible for his death. She introduces him to Father Barry, who tries to force him to provide information for the courts that will smash the dock racketeers. Written by Colin Tinto <cst@imdb.com> It walked away with just about every award there was - and it still could ! See more » Genres: 22 June 1954 (Japan) See more » Also Known As: Bottom of the River See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia Eva Marie Saint on Marlon Brando : "I did refer to him once as a hummingbird because you just felt his sensitivity - his sensitivity to life, I guess, and certainly to the other actor and to the material and to the moment at hand. A hummingbird you're in awe of and you can't really catch it, but every time I see one I wish I could get even closer. And so, Brando, in that sense, is humming with all that sensitivity, and in the beginning in put me off a bit.

It felt like he understood me more than I understood myself, knew more about me than I felt I knew myself. And after a while I just relaxed. And I'd come from the Actors Studio, we all had, so I just relaxed and used that. I've never been intimidated by other actors because 'I'm' an actor. I'm not in awe, but I certainly have respect for other wonderful actors. People ask me 'weren't you nervous opposite Marlon Brando?' But no, I was at the Studio, and he was a member and a fine, fine actor." See more » Goofs Obvious dummy being thrown off the roof in the opening scene. See more » Quotes On the Waterfront (1954) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) Background On the Waterfront (1954) is a classic, award-winning, controversial film directed by Elia Kazan - a part drama and part gangster film. The authentic-looking, powerful film is concerned with the problems of trade unionism, corruption and racketeering.

And it is set on New York's oppressive waterfront docks, where dock workers struggled for work, dignity, and to make ends meet under the control of hard-knuckled, mob-run labor unions that would force them to submit to daily 'shape-ups' by cruel hiring bosses. To add realism, it was filmed over 36 days on-location in Hoboken, New Jersey (in the cargo holds of ships, workers' slum dwellings, the bars, the littered alleys, and on the rooftops). And some of the labor boss' chief bodyguards/goons in the film (Abe Simon as Barney, Tony Galento as Truck, and Tami Mauriello as Tullio) were real-life, professional ex-heavyweight boxers. The low-budget film brought a depressing and critical, but much-needed message about society's ills to the forefront, and was hailed by most critics. The film's morality tale of corruption ends with its ultimate defeat and the saving of the community by a morally-redeemed martyr (a common man with a conscience).

With a naturalistic acting style, Marlon Brando portrayed Terry Malloy, an inarticulate, struggling, brutish hero and small-time, washed-up ex-boxer who took a regrettable fall in the ring. Now an errand boy and 'owned' by the union boss, he is unaware of his own personal power. But eventually because of torment over his actions and his realization of new choices in life, he joins forces with a tough-minded, courageous and crusading priest (Malden) and a loving, angelic blonde woman (Saint), a sister of one of the victims, to seek reform and challenge the mob. The political and criminal context of the film's background and history are extremely important. The similarity between Terry Malloy's whistle-blowing testimony against his own corrupt group paralleled director Elia Kazan's self-justifying admissions before the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC) two years earlier (in 1952) as a 'friendly' witness regarding his one-time membership in the Communist party and the naming of others who were sympathizers.

Kazan attempted to vindicate himself politically with this semi-autobiographical film - the justification of naming names ('squealing') to expose the evils of corrupt unions, and the suggestion of sympathy advocated for squealers. The film's story was based on New York Sun (now defunct) newspaper reporter Malcolm Johnson's expose, found in a series of 24 articles called Crime on the Waterfront. The series chronicled actual dockside events, labor racketeering in New York's dockyards, and corrupt practices, and won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. It revealed rampant bribery, extortions, kickbacks to union officials, payoffs, theft, union-sponsored loan sharks, murder, and the mob's tyrannical influence on New York's waterfront. Originally, Kazan had hired playwright Arthur Miller in 1950 to research the world of longshoremen in Brooklyns Red Hook area (and use material from Johnson's articles), and craft a script for a film to be titled The Hook. It had a similar plot to the 1954 film - the setting of a Brooklyn waterfront with a militant trade unionist hero struggling with mobsters in the dockworkers union.

The film was never produced, due to HUAC pressure on Columbia Pictures' studio chief Harry Cohn, who told Miller to change the villains from corrupt and militant union officials and gangsters to evil communists, so it would have a pro-American feel -- but Miller refused and pulled out as screenwriter. Arthur Miller was replaced by novelist and scriptwriter Budd Schulberg (another 'friendly' witness before HUAC), who worked in collaboration with Kazan. The film's plot was taken from Schulberg's own original story - which reworked all the previous material and also dropped the Communists in the plot. On the Waterfront emphasized the waterfront's strict code of "D and D...Deaf and Dumb" -- keeping quiet instead of 'ratting out' or testifying (as a 'friendly' witness) before a Congressional waterfront crime commission against bullying union boss Johnny Friendly (an interesting and ironic choice of names), portrayed by Lee J. Cobb: [Schulberg based Karl Malden's character on the tough and profane-mouthed waterfront Catholic priest Father John M. Corridan, and Pat Henning's character on a Father John disciple named Arthur Browne.

Terry Malloy was modeled after whistle-blowing longshoreman Anthony De Vincenzo, and Johnny Friendly was based on mobster Albert Anastasia, chief executioner of Murder, Inc.] The harsh, naturalistic, well-acted and uncompromising film was hugely successful, critically and financially. Its budget of slightly less than $1 million brought in almost $10 million at the box-office. Boris Kaufman's gritty black and white cinematography was singled out as superior, and the film received a phenomenal number of Academy Award nominations - twelve. It won eight Academy Awards including: Best Picture and Director (Kazan), Best Story and Screenplay (Schulberg), Best Actor (Brando), Best Supporting Actress (Saint in her film debut), Best B/W Cinematography (Boris Kaufman), Best B/W Art Direction-Set Decoration (Richard Day), and Best Film Editing (Gene Milford). Three of its other four nominations were supporting acting nods (for a total of four): Best Supporting Actor (Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Rod Steiger), and Best Scoring (Leonard Bernstein). This was the only film that wasn't a musical for which Leonard Bernstein ever provided the soundtrack.

The Story Following the credits, drumbeats accompany a scene at the New York waterfront, where a large ocean liner is docked. The angry gangster union boss, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) who callously rules this section of the waterfront, walks up the gangplank with his mobster entourage from the office (shack) of the Longshoreman's local Union. Slow-witted, illiterate waterfront bum Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) follows behind, surviving as a lackey by running odd jobs and errands for Johnny and doing strong-arm work. He is asked to lure to the rooftop of his tenement building a young dockworker Joey Doyle, one of the informant union workers who is planning to cooperate with crime investigators by testifying (before the Waterfront Crime Commission) against gangsters who tyrannically control the docks. Terry shouts to fellow pigeon-lover Joey in his apartment, in the opening lines of the film. He unwittingly becomes a pawn in setting a trap to murder his fellow longshoreman dockworker: Joey, Joey Doyle!...Hey, I got one of your birds. I recognize him by the band...He flew into my coop. You want him?

Terry keeps pigeons in coops on his tenement apartment's rooftop, and soon convinces potential informant Joey to meet him on the roof. When he looks up to the rooftop, he sees the dark figures of two men standing there. Instead of joining Joey on the roof, he releases his pigeon into the air, and then walks down the street to a seedy bar, Johnny Friendly's BAR. In front of the corner saloon is Charley Malloy "The Gent" (Rod Steiger), Terry's smartly-dressed older brother and manager. Charley, who works as Johnny Friendly's smart and crooked lawyer and as chief lieutenant, is flanked by two of Friendly's goons. In shock, Terry witnesses Joey's murder, as he is hurled from the rooftop to his death many stories below with a bloodcurdling scream. One of the thugs coldly states: "I think somebody fell off the roof. He thought he was gonna sing for the Crime Commission.

He won't." Unknowingly set up, Terry is stunned by the murder, believing that the racketeers (and his brother) would only threaten the man: I thought they was gonna talk to him...I thought they was gonna talk to him and get him to dummy up...I figured the worst they was gonna do was lean on him a little bit...Wow! He wasn't a bad kid, that Joey. Two of the thugs make a joke about the 'squealer' who has threatened to 'sing' to the crime commission and break the waterfront's unspoken code to be 'D and D' (Deaf and Dumb): A canary. Maybe he could sing but he couldn't fly! In the street, a shocked crowd gathers around Joey's body. Introduced characters are local parish priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) who delivers the last rites, Joey's father Pop Doyle (John Hamilton), and Joey's fresh-faced sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint). One of the neighbors, Mrs. Collins (Anne Hegira) knows this was no accident: "Same thing happened to my Andy five years ago...(about Joey) He was the only longshoreman that had the guts to talk to them crime investigators ...

Everybody knows that." Pop laments that his son didn't follow his advice: "Kept telling him. Don't say nothin'. Keep quiet. You'll live longer." Angered by the senseless murder of the brother she was close to, Edie screams: "I want to know who killed my brother!" In the rough waterfront bar where some of the patrons watch a prizefight on a TV above the bar, Big Mac (James Westerfield) the waterfront hiring boss, brings beer-drinking Johnny Friendly a thick wad of bills, revealing union racketeering, corruption, strong-arm tactics and payoffs: "Here's the cut on the shape-up. Eight hundred and ninety-one men at three bucks a head, that's, uh, - twenty-six seventy-three...We got a banana boat at 46 tomorrow. If we could pull a walk-out, it might mean a few bucks from the shippers. Them bananas go bad in a hurry." Friendly responds sharply: "Ask two G's." A whole network of runners for Friendly's mob are in the bar including a weasel-like banker nicknamed "J.P." Morgan (Barry Macollum) and another conniving mobster named Skins (Fred Gwynne).

As a man in his 30s who is exploited like a pawn by others, ex-prizefighter and has-been Terry knows that he owes his waterfront career and livelihood to Johnny Friendly, head of the racketeers, and to his brother Charley, although he was forced to take a 'fall' in a boxing fight. But he also realizes that he is dull-witted and inarticulate, and not even capable of accurately counting a wad of bills. Big Mac good-naturedly comments on Terry's lack of education: The only arithmetic he ever got was hearing the referee count up to ten. But Terry is hot-tempered, and reacts harshly to the criticism. Charley excuses his brother's a-typical behavior: "It's just the Joey Doyle thing. You know how he is. He exaggerates the thing. Just too much Marquis of Queensbury. It softens 'em up." Johnny raises his voice and explains how he became head of the local union and continues to maintain a lucrative (but illegal) operation.

He also calmly rationalizes to Terry about the death of Joey Doyle - a waterfront dockworker who might have threatened the entire business: When I was sixteen, I had to beg for work in the hold. I didn't work my way up out of there for nuthin'...You know, takin' over this local took a little doin'. There's some pretty rough fellas in the way. They gave me this (he displays an ugly scar on his neck) to remember them by...I got two thousand dues-payin' members in this local - that's $72,000 a year legitimate and when each one of 'em puts in a couple of bucks a day just to make sure they work steady - well, you figure it out. And that's just for openers. We got the fattest piers in the fattest harbor in the world. Everything moves in and out - we take our cut...You don't suppose I can afford to be boxed out of a deal like this, do ya? A deal I sweated and bled for, on account of one lousy little cheese-eater, that Doyle bum, who thinks he can go squealin' to the Crime Commission? Do ya?

(pause) Well, DO YA? Terry is given "a present from your Uncle Johnny," a fifty-dollar bill, and then promised a prime work area at the docks at the next morning's shape-up: "Put Terry up in the loft. Number one. Every day. It's nice, easy work, you see. You check in and you goof off on the coffee bags. OK?" Charley reinforces Johnny's kind gesture to his brother with a warning: "Hey, you got a real friend here. Now don't forget it." Up on his rooftop at daybreak the next day, Terry tells a fourteen-year old neighborhood boy named Tommy (Thomas Handley) that he thinks his pigeons have the life: Boy, they sure got it made, huh? Eatin'. Sleepin'. Flyin' around like crazy. Raisin' gobs of squabs. The faint sound of ship's whistle brings Terry back to reality and he hurries to the docks, where hundreds of men mill around on the pier. [The film effectively uses authentic sounds from its environment: foghorns, ship's whistles, etc.

to heighten the realism.] Some of the longshoremen are muttering about the unfortunate Doyle death, because he "couldn't learn to keep his mouth shut." Two of Friendly's goons threaten Timothy J. "Kayo" Dugan (Pat Henning): "Why don't you keep that big mouth of yours shut?...What are you, a wise guy?" Dugan replies: "If I was wise, I wouldn't be no longshoreman for thirty years. I'm poorer now than when I started." Pop Doyle passes the mantle of Joey's jacket to Kayo. While waiting for the morning's work, Terry is approached by Glover (Leif Erickson) and Gillette (Marty Balsam), representatives from the Waterfront Crime Commission. The commission is "getting ready to hold public hearings on waterfront crime and underworld infiltration of longshore unions." When questioned by them about what he knows, being the last one to see Joey alive, Terry pleads ignorance: I don't know nothin', I ain't seen nothin', I'm not sayin' nothin'.

At the 8 am whistle announcing the shape-up at the pier entrance (for 5 gangs and 100 banana carriers), Big Mac calls forward men to work for the day. Terry Malloy is favored and one of the first to be called. From the side, Edie and Father Barry watch, as he tells her: "This is my parish. I don't know how much I can do, but I'll never find out unless I come down here and take a good look for myself." When Big Mac is surrounded by the men, he throws the work tabs over their heads, causing a mad, animalistic, free-for-all scramble. Terry meets the sister of the murdered union worker when he grabs a tab that Edie's father had seen first. When she wrestles with him for the tab, he first teases her, withholding the tab from her. But when he learns she's "Joey Doyle's sister," he gives her the working tab. She gives it to her humiliated father so he can work. Father Barry asks the rejected men who have been denied work: "What do you do now?...Is this all you do, just take it like this?...Huh?

What about your union?" He is told that the lawless local union is mob-controlled by Johnny Friendly: "The waterfront's tougher, Father, like it ain't part of America." Father Barry offers the men "the bottom of the church" as a safe haven so that they can discuss their grievances - it can be one place where it's safe to talk. At work, Charley finds Terry lying comfortably on a pile of coffee bags while reading a photo magazine filled with bikini-clad women. He sends Terry on an "extra detail" to sit in on tough, insistent Father Barry's meetings (with the "Doyle girl") that he is organizing in his parish to expose union racketeering. Terry is to keep "a run-down" on the "names and numbers of all the players." Terry argues that he doesn't want to stool, but Charley straightens him out: Let me tell you what stooling is. Stooling is when you rat on your friends, the guys you're with. Johnny wants a favor. Don't think about it. Do it.

In the church meeting with only a handful of longshoremen in attendance, Father Barry speaks out against the controlling power of the mob and stands up for moral principles against the corrupt bosses. He preaches about the reality of the situation: Isn't it simple as one, two, three? One. The working conditions are bad. Two. They're bad because the mob does the hiring. And three. The only way we can break the mob is to stop letting them get away with murder. He attempts to determine who killed Joey Doyle, asking: "Who killed Joey Doyle?" The reaction to the Father's question is total silence - the men either look down, blankly stare away, or look embarrassed. Then the priest asks a second, more pointed question: "How can we call ourselves Christians and protect these murderers with our silence?" Terry sits at the back of the parish during the meeting, viewed suspiciously: "The brother of Charley the Gent. They'll help us get to the bottom of the river." Father Barry cuts through the talk and returns to the crucial question: Now listen. You know who the pistols are. Are you going to keep still until they cut you down one by one? Are ya?

The priest is told by Kayo Dugan that there is a code of silence, called "D 'n D" on the docks: "Deaf and dumb. No matter how much we hate the torpedoes, we don't rat." Father Barry persuasively argues that they must break the code of silence and testify, but he feels defeated when the men don't respond to his words: There's one thing we've got in this country and that's ways of fightin' back. Gettin' the facts to the public. Testifyin' for what you know is right against what you know is wrong. Now what's ratting to them is telling the truth for you. Now can't you see that? Can't you see that? The meeting is suddenly broken up when rocks shatter the church windows. As Father Barry pairs off the men, Terry suddenly grabs Edie and leads her to safety down a fire escape. Thugs who wield long clubs and baseball bats mercilessly ambush and beat the men. Walking Edie home through a park, Edie asks Terry about where his affiliation lies: Edie: Which side are you with? Terry: Me? I'm with me, Terry.

After he identifies his self-interest, Terry is confronted for a handout by an old rummy, one-armed derelict longshoreman named Mott Murphy (John Heldabrand). The man recognizes Edie and Terry, and accuses him of being there the night Joey was killed. Although bought off by the toss of some coins by Terry, Murphy spitefully calls him a "bum." Terry tells Edie to pay no attention to the "juice-head" who hangs around the neighborhood. ‎On the Waterfront (1954) directed by Elia Kazan • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd Part of Dastardly Difficult December: film nr.39 One of the great American Classics that somehow managed to elude me all this time. I now fully understand what people mean when they say that acting has a pre-Brando and a post-Brando era. Brando delivers a seminal performance here that shook things up mainly because he showed a natural quality to his acting that wasn't common in those days. He wasn't articulate, was very physical and clearly improvised a lot.

As an adept of the Actors Studio he was a practitioner of Method Acting and if ever there was a definitive example of what that can do to a performance, it is shown in Brando's portrayal of Terry Malloy. In a story… Review by Sally Jane Black 12 It's hard for me to get behind this film, which I read as a call-to-action to cleanse unions (and by extension, leftist politics) of corrupting influences. Watching a film where a man, played with surprisingly quiet passion by Brando, stands up (eventually) to those corrupting influences in risk of his life, his freedom, or his love, watching this knowing that Kazan, perhaps out of spite, perhaps out of cowardice, perhaps both, named names to HUAC, just left me feeling bitter. Reading it instead as a story about rejecting the union entirely would not, of course, make it any better. This is not an atonement; it's just almost a defense. That it is made with craft, with the shadows of noir… 3 **Part of the Best Picture Project** On the Waterfront is a masterpiece. That much anyone can be sure of as it concludes. But just why is it a masterpiece?

As I talked about in my review of Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire, that film dealt with the conflict between the old Hollywood romanticism and the incoming age of realism, where stories weren't overplayed, merely depicted. In many ways, On the Waterfront is a spiritual successor to that film, arriving after that conflict is over. Seeing On the Waterfront in historical relevance with the other Best Picture nominees only seems to make it stand out more. Here, Italian Neo-Realism arrives to Hollywood. On the Waterfront may have aspects of it that… 7 In the canon of movie masterpieces On the Waterfront stands alone. Elia Kazan's personal fury is manifested onto the screen, but with the restrained passion and technical dexterity of a virtuoso. Marlon Brando's performance was such a giant leap in progress that it ushered in a new industry standard. The maze of rooftops, half-empty bars and brooding, smoke-swept streets as seen through the caustic eye of cinematographer Boris Kaufman are as intuitively truthful as the deepening creases on Brando's brow.

All of this is wrapped up (and inextricably linked to) Leonard Bernstein's brash and moving score, which at turns claps and bangs with the fiery exuberance of youth, then softens with the eye-stinging maturity of an old man looking back.… 11 Some people just have a face that sticks in your mind. I'm eternally grateful to Elia Kazan for casting exceptionally handsome leading men in his films: James Dean, Gregory Peck, and my all-time favorite, Marlon Brando. In A Streetcar Named Desire Brando displayed such raw sex appeal and naturalism that I keep forgetting that I didn't like the film. But On the Waterfront is (finally!) a film starring Brando I can truly enjoy. It's such a pity that he didn't seem to give a damn about his career. One look at his filmography and you wonder what the hell he was thinking, squandering his looks and talent all those years.

Thankfully, On The Waterfront is utterly gripping from start to… 5 Winner of 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, and widely considered by many to be one of the greatest American films ever made, On the Waterfront would've been a delightful cinema for me if I hadn't already seen its Bollywood ripoff numerous times since its release, due to which this one only felt predictable, somewhat boring & not very satisfying. On the Waterfront tells the story of Terry Malloy, a longshoreman who was once a promising boxer but now only runs errands for his brother, who's the right-hand man of the union boss who controls the waterfront with his mob influence. The plot follows Malloy as he struggles to stand up against the widespread corruption around him and fights for the… Review by Paul Moga ★★★★½ An ex-prize fighter, turned dock worker, finds himself between the corrupt union bosses and the law when he becomes party to the murder of a local boy. What happens to the kid eats him up inside and even more so when he falls for the boys sister. Will he put his life on the line for whats right or will he keep quiet and put his head down as he has before?

Ok so Brando might be a real life scumbag, but there is no denying the man was talented. In a similar way that Stallone was Rocky, Brando was Terry Malloy, slipping with ease into a character that had a lot more layers than you original would suspect. In… Film Notes -On the Waterfront On the Waterfront (United States, 1954, 108 minutes, b&w, 35mm) Directed by Elia Kazan Based on a screenplay by Budd Schulberg Starring: Lee J. Cobb . . . . . . . . . . Johnny Friendly Rod Steiger . . . . . . . . . . Charley 'the Gent' Malloy Eva Marie Saint . . . . . . . . . . Edie Doyle The following film notes were prepared for the New York State Writers Institute by Kevin Jack Hagopian, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Pennsylvania State University: It is one of the most justly famous scenes in the history of the American cinema, and surely one of the simplest: two brothers, talking in the back seat of a cab.

Once they were joined by the hope of climbing out of their slum childhood through the patronage of "important people." Now they are divided by the emerging moral sense of one of the brothers, and the rising fear of the other that the important people may turn on them both and rend them. It is of course, Elia Kazan's On The Waterfront, a film whose themes of brotherly loyalty and political betrayal have become so integral to the American film that another brilliant film, 1980's Raging Bull, is so unashamedly inspired by it that the protagonist of the latter film recites the indelible lines of the taxicab scene. The stories of the making of On the Waterfront are legion. That the film was originally a scenario written by Arthur Miller, who fell out with director Elia Kazan over Kazan's political choices, and whose own research on waterfront crime would later see light as the distinguished play A View From the Bridge. That the project was originally to star Hoboken's most famous son, Frank Sinatra. That filming was facilitated with the aid of the same New York mobsters who had poisoned the longshoreman's union.

Even the remembrances of the makers of the film have passed into film folklore, told and retold like war stories: actor Rod Steiger recalled having to read his lines in the cab to a listless assistant director, Marlon Brando having left the set to see his therapist. (And everyone holding their breath, hoping none of us would ask what venetian blinds were doing on the back window of a taxi. We never did.) Eva Marie Saint's dropped glove, in the playground scene, turning a botched take into a lyrical moment when Brando picks it up, and pulls it on over his own outsized fighter's hand. (And that, too, might have been more planning that inspiration.) Then too, there is the controversy: On the Waterfront is its feisty writer and angry director's very public articulation of their need to dissociate themselves with their former political and cultural allies, loudly, forcefully, and forever. The story of a rat with honor, On the Waterfront's own reception has been less that of a film than of an iconoclastic political essay which seems to infuriate everyone who reads it. Humane yet bitter, raging yet reflective, On the Waterfront contains multitudes.

No other American film links together so many beautifully structured sequences, each its own tiny movie. Take a close look at our introduction to the ethics of the waterfront in an early sequence in Johnny Friendly's bar, after Terry has reluctantly induced a stool pigeon to his death. Kazan's theatrical background staging the works of Williams and Miller is in evidence here, the closed world of the Friendly bar made tense and real through Kazan's blocking choices, and the minute pieces of business he gives every character. A dozen minor characters crowd the backroom at Friendly's, some even without lines, but each perfectly drawn, and each a creature of the backslapping world of mutual obligations Johnny Friendly and his crew have set up. We find out here that the waterfront is a debtor's hell, and every longshoreman owes Johnny something -- a job, money, even his soul. Here we meet Terry Malloy and his brother Charley, and here we find out concisely what each of them owe to Johnny. The story of the movie is the choice each brother faces in how they will work off their indebtedness, in blood or testimony.

The look and feel of On the Waterfront is gloomy, ascetic, and entirely plausible, an implicit rejection by Kazan of the earnest but blandly sentimental Hollywood films he had made in the previous decade, like Gentleman's Agreement and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The gritty photography by Boris Kaufman and the extensive New Jersey location shooting make On the Waterfront a legitimate bearer of the European neorealist traditions so many other American films of the time (like Jules Dassin's Naked City, or Fred Zinnemann's Theresa) started to imitate, but couldn't, falling off in later reels into Hollywood convention. Kazan sustains the proletarian angst of the docks through every shot and every space of the film. You see it in the chill breath of the actors in the freezing, gray New Jersey afternoons, and you feel it in the sweaty Polish tavern wedding scene, where the people of the waterfront seek release from their toil with such frantic energy. Kazan, not himself particularly religious, understands the power of religious imagery. There are the job tokens, like Roman coins, scattered among the desperate souls at the shape-up.

There is the film's betrayal plot, ingeniously inverted from its biblical model to make betrayal a saintly act. And there is, famously, Terry's martyrdom and redemption, the long walk back from his dockside Calvary. If Karl Malden's Father Barry sometimes rings a sanctimonious note into Terry's story, it is because the moral analysis of the film makes his talk of religious parallels unnecessary: the philosophical job of On the Waterfront, to show that the life of an ordinary working stiff can become a thing with transcendent moral implications, is accomplished without his hard-nosed pieties. And finally, there are the politics of On the Waterfront. Before the making of On the Waterfront, Kazan, like others in the movies, had renounced his youthful Left politics under pressure from a Congressional kangaroo court, the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. In the years after their awkward, stage-managed testimony, many had made it clear they had testified to save their careers, and some of these found grudging reacceptance among their peers in the business. But Kazan testified with defiance, rejecting the idealistic communitarian politics of his past with a vengeance that spoke as much of self-loathing as political recantation.

Not content with this public ritual, Kazan took out an ad in the New York Times "explaining" his actions, and urging others to join him. It was a trademark gesture: Kazan always insisted on the rightness of his beliefs and methods, not only for him, but for everyone. On the Waterfront benefits greatly from this righteousness, this sturdiness of belief. With Budd Schulberg's literate and well-constructed screenplay as a blueprint, and Marlon Brando's empathetic performance as Terry Malloy to light his way, Kazan's commitment in this film to a course of absolute individualism is as unwavering as it is, I believe, self-destructive. Many years ago, noted director Lindsay Anderson, then a film critic, wrote an essay he called simply, "The Last Sequence of On the Waterfront." In it, he scored the politics of the film's last moments. And yet, as a filmmaker to be, he recognized Kazan's extraordinary ability to convince us, through the cinematic languages of editing, camerawork, and performance, of the rightness of Terry's actions. Therein, said, Anderson, lay the danger.

Others of us, in accord with Anderson's politics, might say that proof of the political power of art is most in evidence when it can bring us, even against our initial will and for only a moment, to a place of questioning the old verities. Even the most treasured old truths must be strong enough to stand up against an attack as biting and incisive as On the Waterfront. Kazan never warmed to those professional anti-Communists who thought he was agreeing with them, recognizing them mostly as opportunists or fools. He would be no one's spokesman but his own. And yet, his modern masterwork of rugged individualism continued to testify for him, angering those on the Left like Anderson as much for its hard-won artistic power to persuade as for its basic politics. In his last years, when Kazan was given a long-disputed honorary Academy Award, he was escorted onstage by Martin Scorcese and Robert DeNiro, two masters of American screen realism whose lifework had been inspired by Kazan, and by this film in particular.

It was thought that the presence of Scorcese and DeNiro would forestall demonstrations from the audience, much the way the accompaniment of Johnny Friendly by his gigantic bodyguards, Truck and Tillio, had generated respect on the docks in On the Waterfront. But Kazan did not need the muscle. Frail, the once-fiery personality now sunken behind elderly eyes, Kazan watched the surprisingly passionate response of the audience when he came on stage with what appeared to be a measure of satisfaction. He seemed to recognize that his outspokenness would outlive him. He was right. — Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at A Review of the Film On The Waterfront Directed by Elia Kazan in 1954 | Kibin A Review of the Film On The Waterfront Directed by Elia Kazan in 1954 Sign Up & Access Essays Already a member? Login here Pages: 2 This preview is partially blurred. Sign up to view the full document. Sign Up & Access Essays Already a member? Login here End of preview Upgrade to view the full document This is an unformatted preview.

Sign up to view the full document End of preview Upgrade to view the full document On the Waterfront is a classic award-winning and controversial film It received eight academy-awards in 1954 including best-picture and director The director Eliza Kazan in collaboration with Budd Schulberg wrote the films screenplay Based on actual dockside events in Hoboken New Jersey On the Waterfront is a story of a dock worker who tried to overthrow a corrupt union Marlon Brando superbly portrays the character of Terry Malloy He is a young ex-prize fighter now a dock worker given easy jobs because his brother is the right-hand man of the corrupt union boss Johnny Friendly After Terry unwittingly allows himself to be used in setting up a mans death he starts to question the basic assumptions if his life This includes his loyalty to his brother and Johnny who after all ordered him to take a dive in his big fight at Madison Square Garden The films controversy exists in the fact that Terry decides to testify against Johnny Friendly His testimony attempts to show how it is fundamentally right to break group silence in a tough situation even if a person appears to rat on his friends To be at peace with oneself Kazan seems to say one must tell the truth despite the fact that one will face ostracism and as

 in the film probably be murdered Kazan makes the hardships of testifying painfully clear Thus Brandos character is a hero However a dark agenda exists behind the films plot On the Waterfront was made in 1954 two years after Kazan willingly testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee In 1952 Kazan named the names of eight friends and colleges allegedly affiliated with the communist party Kazan was an active member of the communist party in the 1930s until he went through a violent break with the party prior to the hearings He said that communism could override a persons intellect and beliefs He also stated that Hollywood and Broadway heavily financed the @Kibin is a lifesaver for my essay right now!!

- Sandra Slivka, student @ UC Berkeley Wow, this is the best essay help I've ever received! - Camvu Pham, student @ U of M If I'd known about @Kibin in college, I would have gotten much more sleep - Jen Soust, alumni @ UCLA Movie Review - - Astor Offers 'On the Waterfront'; Brando Stars in Film Directed by Kazan - NYTimes.com Astor Offers 'On the Waterfront'; Brando Stars in Film Directed by Kazan A. W. Published: July 29, 1954 A SMALL but obviously dedicated group of realists has forged artistry, anger and some horrible truths into "On the Waterfront," as violent and indelible a film record of man's inhumanity to man as has come to light this year. And, while this explosive indictment of the vultures and the meek prey of the docksides, which was unveiled at the Astor yesterday, occasionally is only surface dramatization and an oversimplification of the personalities and evils of our waterfront, it is, nevertheless, an uncommonly powerful, exciting and imaginative use of the screen by gifted professionals.

Although journalism and television already have made the brutal feudalism of the wharves a part of current history, "On the Waterfront" adds a graphic dimension to these sordid pages. Credit for this achievement cannot be relegated to a specific few. Scenarist Budd Schulberg, who, since 1949, has lived with the story stemming from Malcolm Johnson's crusading newspaper articles; director Elia Kazan; the principals headed by Marlon Brando; producer Sam Spiegel; Columbia, which is presenting this independently made production; Leonard Bernstein, who herein is making his debut as a movie composer, and Boris Kaufman, the cinematographer, convincingly have illustrated the murder and mayhem of the waterfront's sleazy jungles, They also have limned a bestial and venal boss longshoreman; the "shape-up" by which only his obedient, mulct, vassals can earn a day's pay; the hard and strange code that demands that these sullen men die rather than talk about these injustices and a crime commission that helps bring some light into their dark lives. Perhaps these annals of crime are too labyrinthine to be fully and incisively captured by cameras.

Suffice it to say, however, that while Mr. Kazan and Mr. Schulberg have not dug as deeply as they might, they have chosen a proper and highly effective cast and setting for their grim adventure. Moving cameras and crews to the crowded rookeries of Hoboken's quayside, where the film was shot in its entirety, they have told with amazing speed and force the story of Terry Malloy, ex-prize fighter and inarticulate tool of tough, ruthless and crooked labor leader, Johnny Friendly. The labor leader is an absolute un-regenerated monarch of the docks who will blithely shake down his own men as well as ship owners; he will take cuts of pay envelopes and lend his impecunious union members money at usurious rates and he will have his pistol-toting goons dispatch anyone foolish enough to squeal to the crime commission attempting to investigate these practices. It is the story also of one of these courageous few about to "sing" to the commission—a luckless longshoreman unwittingly set up for the kill by Terry Malloy, who is in his soft spot only because his older brother is the boss' slick, right-hand man.

It is the tale of Terry's meeting with the dead man's agonized sister and a fearless, neighborhood priest, who, by love and reason, bring the vicious picture into focus for him. And, it is the account of the murder of Terry's brother; the rampaging younger man's defiant testimony before the commission and the climactic bloody battle that wrests the union from the boss' tenacious grasp. Journalism may have made these ingredients familiar and certainly more inclusive and multi-dimension, but Mr. Kazan's direction, his outstanding cast and Mr. Schulberg's pithy and punchy dialogue give them distinction and terrific impact. Under the director's expert guidance, Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy is a shatteringly poignant portrait of an amoral, confused, illiterate citizen of the lower depths who is goaded into decency by love, hate and murder. His groping for words, use of the vernacular, care of his beloved pigeons, pugilist's walk and gestures and his discoveries of love and the immensity of the crimes surrounding him are highlights of a beautiful and moving portrayal. In casting Eva Marie Saint—a newcomer to movies from TV and Broadway—Mr.

Kazan has come up with a pretty and blond artisan who does not have to depend on these attributes. Her parochial school training is no bar to love with the proper stranger. Amid scenes of carnage, she gives tenderness and sensitivity to genuine romance. Karl Maiden, whose importance in the scheme of this drama seems overemphasized, is, however, a tower of strength as the militant man of the cloth. Rod Steiger, another newcomer to films, is excellent as Brando's fearful brother. The pair have a final scene that is a harsh and touching revelation of their frailties. Lee J. Cobb is muscularly effective as the labor boss. John Hamilton and Pat Henning are typical "longshoremen," gents who look at home in a hold, and Tony Galento, Tami Mauriello and Abe Simon—erstwhile heavyweight boxing contenders, who portray Cobb's chief goons—are citizens no one would want to meet in a dark alley. Despite its happy ending; its preachments and a somewhat slick approach to some of the facets of dockside strife and tribulations, "On the Waterfront" is moviemaking of a rare and high order.

ON THE WATERFRONT; screen play by Budd Schulberg; based on an original story by Mr. Schulberg and suggested by the series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles by Malcolm Johnson; directed by Elia Kazan; produced by Sam Spiegel; a Horizon picture presented by Colum bia; at the Aster. Terry Malloy . . . . . Marlon Brando Edie Doyle . . . . . Eva Marie saint Father Barry . . . . . Karl Malden Johnny Friendly . . . . . Lee J. Cobb Charley Malloy . . . . . Rod Steiger Audience Reviews for On the Waterfront ½ Kazan's self-defense for naming names to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1952 (and his apologia for denunciation) is a gritty combo of realistic crime drama, romance and character study with a stellar central performance by Marlon Brando. Carlos Magalhães Super Reviewer All these years later Elia Kazan's film about mob corruption in the dock workers' unions is still poignant and thrilling. Marlon Brando plays ex-boxer and mob front man Terry Malloy.

He falls for Edie Doyle (Saint), a dock worker's daughter, and an outspoken opponent of the mob's hold on the workers. The film is an indictment of mob ties, but also highlights the mob's ability to corrupt the innocent, and turn those who have little or no options. Terry has been taken in because his brother (Steiger) has no confidence in him, which turns him into a bum. He finally stands up for himself, and in the process finds the love of Edie Doyle, and fights for the many workers who are disadvantaged. This is a beautifully fraught film that yields some of the most emotionally deep performances of Saint or Brando's careers. This is a portrait of Old Hollywood, a film that pushes political boundaries, and a film that is just, simply amazing by any standard. Spencer S. Super Reviewer Marlon Brando steals the show with a pulse-pounding performance as Terry, a man who has never been trusted ever since his departure from world-class fighting. He is now living on the streets with no real home, falling for a woman and trying to earn respect from everyone else. As this woman's brother dies, she seeks Terry for help after realizing he has nothing left to lose.

There are very tight moments of dialogue and the chemistry between each character interaction is phenomenal. This is one of the best crime films I have ever seen, because instead of focussing on the blood and guts of the real crime, it focusses on the mystery of it and the subtlety of the aftermath and recovery/revenge. "On the Waterfront" is brilliantly acted, stupendously directed, and filmed to perfection. I Love this film! KJ Proulx

Question: Who directed the 1954 film 'On the Waterfront'?
Answer: Elia Kazan